The Lebone team is incredibly lucky to be able to work with talented and dedicated individuals based in our target locations. One of these is Justy Ndaambe, who has been enormously valuable to the project since we last June, when we were first introduced. She is trained as an electrical engineer, but has also been working tirelessly in the areas of youth empowerment and women’s rights, with considerable success (she has been invited to a conference on women’s rights in Geneva this spring). When we are away from Five Rand, Justy is our eyes and our ears: she helps us stay in touch with the community, checking on our cell deployments and fielding questions from individuals in the community, and generally keeping things running smoothly.
When we returned to Five Rand in January to collect data from our first deployment and distribute the next generation of fuel cells, Justy was able to give extremely valuable insight into the everyday needs of the community, and the the evolving design challenges of building a low-cost, durable technological product for a rugged and disadvantaged environment.
The visit, though brief, reaffirmed our optimism. With the each deployment reaching a wider audience, and with a even more developments in the pipeline, we are very excited for the next few months and designing with Africa.
Tags: community, team
A lot of progress since Paris. Congratulations on the Popular Mechanics award. I enjoy reading your rss feed. Keep the news coming about your inspiring project.